It's Called Jealousy
by L.TeddyBear
Summary: When Aomine's over-protectiveness of Kuroko starts to show. Typical Aomine doesn't understand, but that doesn't mean the observant Kuroko doesn't as well.


**and this one took way too long to write despite how simple it is. this is horrible, i can hardly even make it through one-shots anymore /cries. i kinda gave up halfway but yeah, managed to get it done, haha. people who read it seems to like this one a lot, so enjoy. **

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_It's Called Jealousy_

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Aomine wasn't sure when it began, but lately every time he saw Kise clinging onto Tetsu as if his life depended on it with additional flowers and bunnies and sparkles practically visible in the air around the two, Aomine felt a few veins in his head tense up to the point of near bursting and every single muscle on his body twitched with the desire to roughly yank that giddy blonde off _his_ Tetsu.

At what point did he begin to label Tetsu as his, he didn't know either. Well, Tetsu was _his_ partner after, yeah? The shadow to his light so he guessed that it made perfect sense.

Right? Right.

Back to Kise who, at the moment, had his arm slung around Tetsu, pulling him close into a tight one arm hug while blabbering about something stupid in that annoyingly energetic voice too loud and too cheerful for his own good. Aomine sat there in front of them, forcefully stuffing his own mouth with hot curry, completely ignoring the burning trail it was leaving down his pipeline as his eye narrowed and twitched at the sight in front of him.

"Aomine-kun, are you okay?" Satsuki hesitantly questioned from his side.

"Perfectly fine," he growled out...in a way that totally betrayed his words. He caught Midorima sparing him a questioning yet at the same time, warning glance from the corner of his eyes cause apparently over a year of being on the same basketball team made Midorima know him well enough to catch the signs of when he was near the point of eruption.

However, even Midorima's look and Akashi's presence wasn't enough to stop Aomine from slamming his hands on the table and shooting up from his seat with an outburst of, "Hey, Kise, stop clinging onto Tetsu like some leech! It's fucking annoying!" when Kise was attempting to feed Tetsu some pudding because screw it! He had enough of this!

Their table, including those around theirs, fell silent. The only sound that could be heard from close proximity was the crunch of chips as Murasakibara continued to eat, apparently unfazed by Aomine's loud expression of his withering patience and self-control, which at this point was pretty much non-existent.

Kise's face was priceless with eyes wide, mouth hung opened in shock while holding a spoonful of wobbly pudding which was forgotten and was about to fall off the utensil in any given moment. Tetsu, even though his face remained relatively the same, had his lips parted into a small gape and there was no missing the look of surprise and slight amusement in his eyes.

"Aomine," came Akashi's voice as clear and sharp as fine glass, cutting through the silence.

Aomine flinched as Akashi's voice sliced through him, carving a sense of awareness into him along with an underlying message of, 'sit back down and I don't want any more trouble from you for the rest of the day'.

Aomine respected his captain enough to heed.

He sat back down, though eyes refusing to leave Tetsu. His midnight blues stared into Tetsu's pastel counterpart for a few seconds before Tetsu broke the connection and shoved Kise's still posed arm away from him.

"Please stop, Kise-kun. It is quite troublesome."

"Kurokkocchi, that's so mean!" Kise whined.

Aomine blinked. A satisfied smirk was tugging his lips upwards when Tetsu spoke up again.

"Aomine-kun, you're being troublesome too."

"What?" he cried. "Hey, hang on a second—" He was about to argue when...

"Aomine."

That voice spoke up again with an even dangerously sharper edge to it than before, so he had no choice but to scrunch up his face in annoyance and resume eating his food without a single world of complaint.

Akashi let out an almost inaudible sigh, obviously exasperated with their actions, especially his no doubt—well, sorry—before the meal continued in an orderly fashion.

ooooo

Practice that afternoon started out smoothly without any problems. Practice games and drills ran like normal. Aomine stepped past the guy guarding him, hand stretched out to receive a pass from a player on his own team before dashing down the court, faking steps and passes left and right, and breaking through every single one of the oppositions on his own before jumping up and slamming the ball down into the hoop in a loud dunk.

Yes, score!

As the ball hit the floor, he stayed suspended in air for a couple of seconds, both hands hanging from the hoop that creaked and bounced under his weight. He sucked in a breath and dropped down, landing neatly on his feet.

Wiping the sweat off his forehead, he turned to start heading back to his side of the court for another round, but a sight from the court next to him made him stop.

The game was still in play and Tetsu had slipped on what appeared to be sweat from exhausted players. Before he fell to the ground, a nearby player caught him in time.

Aomine didn't know exactly what happened in the next few seconds. He just knew that it felt as if a couple of bombs had gone off in his head and it drove him to make it to the center of the next court in record time. All because he suddenly felt the urge to strangle the guy who had his hands on Tetsu.

Shoving the other guy away from Tetsu, he pulled his friend towards him, arms protectively shielding him away from the bastard, while glaring at said bastard with his best death glare. He was about to lower his voice and growl out a death threat when Akashi had to intervene. Again.

Why the hell was it always Akashi!?

If it wasn't for Tetsu kindly—probably sensing the stupid move that he was about to make—elbowing him in the gut, then he would have ended up yelling at their captain because let's face it, when he was in a bad mood, all sense of whatever intelligence he had was shut off like a light switch. Yes, even he realized that about himself. Satsuki would have added 'little' in front of intelligence, but he liked to argue that he wasn't as stupid as what most people made him out to be. Satsuki only rolled her eyes at him when he argued and told him to believe in whatever helped him sleep at night.

So he did.

Well, in the end, he only ended up with fifty extra laps around the school, having to do his drills over again and having to stay behind to clean up after everyone had left.

It could have been a lot worst.

ooooo

When Aomine was finally done with his laps, he came back to the auditorium and fell unceremoniously onto the polished wooden floor. He was definitely going to feel all of his tomorrow morning. It was totally going to hurt like crap.

Hey, that'd be a good excuse to skip school tomorrow. No wait, then that meant he wouldn't be here to play basketball. Oh, he could just skip the first half with this excuse and then show up in the afternoon saying that he felt better. Yep, sounded like a plan to him. Hah, and Satsuki said he was stupid.

He felt a shadow above him and when he opened his eyes, Tetsu was staring down at him.

"Heh? You still here?" he asked, surprised.

"Yes," was all Tetsu said before walking away from him. "I'm almost done with everything here. Let's put the balls back, lock up and go."

Aomine blinked. It took him a couple of seconds to register the meaning of Tetsu's words. When he did, he grinned, pushing himself up and jogging over to help.

ooooo

Their walk home was a silent one. Not that it wasn't always like this. Tetsu never really did talk that much though Aomine knew that he was always listening to whenever he had something to say—to the point of hearing his small mutters that he didn't actually wanted anyone to hear—and taking note of everything around him. For someone who appeared to always be in his own world and had his nose stuck in a book most of the time if he wasn't concentrating on basketball, Tetsu was surprisingly observant; well, perhaps it really wasn't that much of a surprise afterall. That lack of presence was definitely a plus to this to side of Tetsu too. The guy could be standing right next to a secret conversation and the people wouldn't even notice him until everything had been spilled.

Observant and silent, sometimes Aomine had no idea what was going on in Tetsu's head. They played together so well on the court—so fluid and parallel in motion with each and every action matching each other down to a fault—that it was no surprise that some people wondered if they had telepathy or something. Invisible silent signals appeared to be flying back and forth between the two each time he reached out to catch Tetsu's pass without looking or when Tetsu passed to an empty spot knowing that he would be there to catch it.

That's why it frustrated the hell out of him when that wasn't always the case outside of basketball, especially when Tetsu seemed to be able to understand him so well most of the time. When would he be able to understand Tetsu really well too?

"Aomine-kun."

Tetsu's voice broke through his train of thought. "Yeah?" he asked, looking down.

"You have something on your mind." It wasn't even a question, but a statement because Tetsu knew.

"Yeah, I guess."

"Is something bothering you?"

"Well, no, not really." As if he could tell Tetsu what was on his mind.

Tetsu stared at him, face and eyes blank and void of emotion. Though, Aomine knew that he was observing him, analyzing him.

"However," Tetsu spoke up again, "there is something bothering me."

Aomine raised a brow in question. "Yeah? What?"

"Aomine-kun has been acting strange lately."

He nearly tripped over a rock on the side of the road. "Hah? What are you talking about?" Actually, he did know what Tetsu was talking about, but how was he supposed to bring that up when even he himself had no freaking clue why he was even acting that way. Was he supposed to just say, 'Yeah, Tetsu, I don't know why, but I've been pretty pissed at every single person who gets close to you, especially people like Kise, who I just want to punch in the face. Mind helping me shed some light on this?'

Uh…how about not?

Tetsu was didn't say anything for a while, momentarily destroying the comfortableness of the silence they had moments ago and making Aomine's fingers nervously play with the strap of his bag.

"Aomine-kun, I'll be straight about this."

He nodded.

"Do you like me?"

If he was eating a popsicle right now he'd be choking horribly on it. But because his mouth was free, he was able to come to a complete halt and yell, "What!?"

His face must of have been priceless right now as he stared at Tetsu with utter disbelief, jaws dropped nearly to the ground. Tetsu stared back at him and he swore that he could see a tint of amusement and something possibly akin to laughter in those light blue eyes. He was pretty sure a corner of those lips curved up slightly for a second as well. However, just as quickly as those emotions appeared, they were all wiped away and replaced by a look of absolute seriousness instead.

The question was a serious one and Tetsu really did want an honest answer from him. And as much as he wanted to dodge the question by acting clueless or brushing it off, he knew that he'd be forced to answer somehow or another anyways, if not now then at another time 'cause Tetsu was damn persistent and stubborn. That and well, he couldn't really bring himself to give a half-assed answer or none at all either when Tetsu was staring at him with eyes that made him feel transparent and completely bare, not to mention utterly small even if he was over a whole head taller than Tetsu.

Aomine looked away, needing to seriously think over that question, which he couldn't do while staring into those eyes.

Did he like Tetsu?

Well, of course he liked Tetsu. He was his closest friend and partner in basketball. Though he knew that wasn't the question he was being asked. Did he like Tetsu in _that way_?

He didn't know.

How the hell was he supposed to know? He liked girls with big boobs! He knew that much and Tetsu definitely wasn't a girl with big boobs. He was…He was…Well, Aomine didn't know what he was!

"Aomine-kun," the soft, but firm voice sounded again. Aomine slowly looked at him. "Were you jealous?"

"No!" he shouted a little too fast. "I was not jeal…I was totally not…maybe?" He finished unconfidently. He let out a growl of frustration. He felt like he was being messed with. Since when the hell did Tetsu do something like mind games?

"Aomine-kun." His name was said again, and by this point, he was quite annoyed and frustrated at both himself and at Tetsu. How did it even come to this in the first place?

"What?" he said in a voice a little too hard for his liking.

Aomine's bag slipped off his shoulder and hit the ground with a loud thud when a pair of lips suddenly met his.

Tetsu's lips were soft and his kiss was light. Aomine stood there, completely frozen for one second, two seconds, three seconds, before he wrapped his arms around Tetsu and pulled him closer, tilting his head to the side for a better angle and responded with his own cracked lips. At that moment, everything in his head was completely gone and all that remained was the sound of his own voice repeating 'Tetsu, Tetsu' over and over again to the point that he was sure that he accidently heard it slipping through his lips and into their kiss.

When they finally broke up and had a few moments to catch their breaths, Tetsu spoke up, "So let me ask you again. Aomine-kun, do you like me?"

As Aomine stared into that face, tinted a slight pink and eyes filled with a look—one that could only be described as adoration, and directed at him no else—that he had never seen before, but was one that managed to make him feel a new sense of warmness spreading throughout his chest, the answer was clear as day now.

And so firmly, he answered, "I do. I like you, Tetsu."

Tetsu smiled; it was a smile so warm and gentle that it made Aomine's heart do a funny little thing called skipping a beat as if he was some shoujo manga heroine who was just confessed to by the guy she liked.

"I like you too."


End file.
